FAQs - Guinea Pig Needed

I downloaded and extracted the file on a Win2K machine - seemed to work fine. No problems with the self-extractor.

Anything you want me to check specifically?

Guinea pig is considered a delicacy in some parts of South America; perhaps a Malbec?

Regards, Dean

Must say that I think a self extracting dot-exe is not the thing to do. No one should be trustful enough to put such a thing on their computer, and it rules out any other OS: from Mac to Linux to various Unices. The web should be non-platform specific. How about just a dot-zip, or a tgz or a bz2? With just the html (or php or whatever) stuff. That way everyone could profit from it without having to worry about viruses or windows executables.

Just my $0.02! :)

-E

I don't see the reason for doing this. Certainly not an EXE file, at the very least we should not get people into the habit of trusting executables or even of relying on their virus protection to save them.

You could put a script on the server that would simply click all the links, and generate a single page with the entire FAQ, delivering it in HTML.

Jose

Thanks. You told me all I need to know. The file has now been taken down.

Someone else answered my question, so the file has now been taken down.

The full name of what I used is a self extracting cabinet file. They are often used for downloading of programs you buy from commercial sites. I can also write an encrypted self extracting cabinet file for which a person must have a password to open. This allows one to open such a file only if they ask for the password by email, for example.

An ordinary zip file is also possible. It does not self extract, but many of the newer computers come with an unzip program built in that is easy to use, and free zip programs are available on the web. It is just not quite as convenient, especially on older computers. However an ordinary zip file is no more secure than an exe file. Quite often virus detection programs will not detect a virus on the zipped file. The virus is only detected when the file is unzipped. I had this happen once on a program from a reliable - I thought - commercial source. As soon as I started unzipping the file the virus protection program put up a huge red warning screen, deleted the virus, and said to do a virus scan to make certain the virus was gone. It turned out that the virus was gone, and it was an older one that was not very serious anyway. Some hackers have even hidden a virus in an image file. The bottom line is that it is not safe to go on the web these days unless you have good antivirus protection that is kept up to date.

The gunzip(.gz) and tar gunzip (tgz) files are most often used on Unix servers for compression and talking to one another. Many computers do not have programs to work with these files, so I don't think they would be a good choice for downloading.

Another thought would be to produce the FAQ in PDF format. All of the links would be live and artwork could also be included.

Unfortunately, I have been traveling, and will continue to be gone for most of October, so I have not been active in the construction, but feel that I could offer little in the way of input, as you chaps have done such a good job.

If consideration is given for the production of a PDF, I would be glad to do this, but it would have to be in early Nov. Just let me know and thanks to all, who have done so much on this project.

Hunt

Jose wrote:

The page has now been taken down, since someone else answered my question. Also see my reply to Emory Davis. Actually an exe file is no more dangerous than an ordinary zip file or (gasp) even an image files these days. Hackers have put virus, adware, malware, etc on them all. Part of the reason for this is that likely people learned that some exe files could contain a virus. There are several other files with little used extensions that hackers use instead of exe. The bottom line is that you are not safe on the web these days unless you have a good anti-virus program and a good firewall, and always keep them up to date.

Actually I downloaded all of the files to the computer using an ftp agent. The files as written will not work on a local basis on the computer because they use a server language - php. A few people have a server on their computer that could be used, but this is very much the exception. So I converted the php files to html ones, and used CuteZip to compress them into a single self-extracting cabinet file and uploaded this to the server using ftp. The advantage of the exe cabinet file over an ordinary zip file is that one has to download only one file, and the beauty of the cabinet file is that it is self extracting requiring no unzip program on the computer. I could just as well upload the individual html files and the single image file to a directory on the server, and upon entering the directory url a user would be given a list of the several files that they could download one by one. This would not take much time, but it is a bit less convenient. I might try this when the FAQs are more complete. I don't need several more new files right now that have to be changed with the many ongoing additions and changes to the FAQs. Using the FAQs in a downloaded form makes a few compromises compared with the online version, but likely not enough to bother most people who have a need for a local version - mainly because they have an unreliable ISP or they are charged high fees for the time they are on line. For my own use, I could care less, because I use DSL and am always connected to the web.

Not meaning to make a big deal about it, I really appreciate the work you're doing to put it up.

Mostly being facetious about tgz, although gzip is just the open source compression format. I have stuffit on a windows PC that understands all these various formats.

With a zip you're not actually executing anything, that's the difference. The virus may be there, but you have to manually kick it off. Unless windows is even less secure than I think, which is possible. We're migrating all of our computers to Linux, even Adele's professional stuff. The interoperability has gotten good enough, open office can handle just about anything -- and we can even run ms-office via crossover. It's all free, never crashes, is secure and is reasonably touchy feely. Today we had to update a windows laptop for expired virus account, as usual it was a real nightmare. BTW the KDE desktop has built in interfacing to all of the compression stuff, so no special SW is needed.

That's my rant for the day! :)

-E

I thought of that. PDF reader programs are a free download. However the commercial programs you must buy to generate PDF files are anything but free, and I could not justify buying one for just this application. If I ever do install such software, I likely will use PDF files, at least as an option. Another good way is to use ftp download. I have an ftp download page on my server, but it is for private use. I do not want to open it up to the general public because it contains media files over 3 GB, and the bandwidth could soon become excessive if this page were available to all. Also not all have an ftp agent on their computer or know how to use it. But when you own a site, using ftp to upload and download from it often is the most convenient way to go.

I - and I bet at least Mark - have Acrobat, as it's needed for e.g. US Federal grant applications. Easy enough to produce .pdf files, and I'd be happy to do so. [Plus, anyone using a Mac and OS X has a default capability to produce .pdfs, so it's really pretty common.]

This is not true. With a zip file, even if the virus goes undetected until being unzipped, once unzipped, the file is still inert. With an EXE, it is actually running.

Jose

PDF is a horrific format suitable only for printing. Besides, that would require the maintanance of two FAQs. Why make more work?

Jose

Microsoft Word will generate PDFs for you if you have it. Choose the "Print" option and select "Print to PDF file." I've frequently made use of that feature at work when the ACS's .doc to PDF conversion routines mangle my documents.

HTH Mark Lipton

That's true under linux too, making pdfs is free and easy.

Hello, Mark! You wrote on Fri, 29 Sep 2006 14:06:45 -0400:

ML> cwdjrxyz wrote: ??>> Hunt wrote: ??>>

??>>> Another thought would be to produce the FAQ in PDF ??>>> format. All of the links would be live and artwork could ??>>> also be included. ??>>

??>> I thought of that. PDF reader programs are a free ??>> download. However the commercial programs you must buy to ??>> generate PDF files are anything but free, and I could not ??>> justify buying one for just this application.

ML> Microsoft Word will generate PDFs for you if you have it. ML> Choose the "Print" option and select "Print to PDF file." ML> I've frequently made use of that feature at work when the ML> ACS's .doc to PDF conversion routines mangle my documents.

That's only in the more recent versions of Word. I am using Word

I believe Open Office will produce PDFs but it's mostly Linuxers who have it even if it is available for Windows.

James Silverton Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.Comcast.not

Thanks for the information, Jim. Since I don't use Win*, I am alas quite ignorant of what is provided for it, but I naturally assume that a M$ product would introduce features for Win* before it does for my platform, Mac OS X. In this case, though, I appear to be mistaken. Also, I am in a privileged position, as my employer has a site license for M$ products, so I get a new version of Word for $5.

Mark Lipton

I found an old Microsoft Word 10 on the computer that came with it, so it is several years old. Yes, I can output a file on it to pdf. If you just want a plain-Jane text copy of the text displayed by the web site, this is no problem. However if you want to use all of the links, etc on the web site, it seems that would require a lot of editing and perhaps require some of the Adobe software. A straight, unedited pdf copy of

Of course adding pictures is no problem for the web pages as written, if that is desired. To keep load times of pages down, I would rather have links to pages with illustrations rather than include them on a text page. Of course if one wanted to add only one or two small images to a text page, that would be no problem. There would be no advantage of using PDF for illustrations that I see, as they will take just as long to download on a pdf page.

Anyway, I think that I will hold off of any extras such as pdf until the FAQs are nearly complete and are not changing so often.

The only thing I use for writing anymore is the notepad. Since being retired, I do not have to try to get people to give me money, and most of my letters concern people wanting to get my money :-) . I was completely spoiled when at work. We had two Native American stenos who could type pages of equations, etc with little effort. There was a professional drafting department, photo department, a German trained instrument maker, and a Dutch trained glassblower. A profession librarian could get you reprints of nearly any paper, including some from late 1800s Russian math journals that I needed.

Actually, my offer was to convert the FAQ to PDF. I've got Acrobat, plus several other similar programs. My only problem would be one of time, as I could not even consider the project until Nov.

Hunt

I found an old Microsoft Word 10 on the computer that came with it, so it is several years old. Yes, I can output a file on it to pdf. If you just want a plain-Jane text copy of the text displayed by the web site, this is no problem. However if you want to use all of the links, etc on the web site, it seems that would require a lot of editing and perhaps require some of the Adobe software. A straight, unedited pdf copy of

Of course adding pictures is no problem for the web pages as written, if that is desired. To keep load times of pages down, I would rather have links to pages with illustrations rather than include them on a text page. Of course if one wanted to add only one or two small images to a text page, that would be no problem. There would be no advantage of using PDF for illustrations that I see, as they will take just as long to download on a pdf page.

Anyway, I think that I will hold off of any extras such as pdf until the FAQs are nearly complete and are not changing so often.

The only thing I use for writing anymore is the notepad. Since being retired, I do not have to try to get people to give me money, and most of my letters concern people wanting to get my money :-) . I was completely spoiled when at work. We had two Native American stenos who could type pages of equations, etc with little effort. There was a professional drafting department, photo department, a German trained instrument maker, and a Dutch trained glassblower. A profession librarian could get you reprints of nearly any paper, including some from late 1800s Russian math journals that I needed.